To all our members and audiences
16th July 2020
AN IMPORTANT UPDATE REGARDING OUR 2020 SEASON
Following Tuesday night’s trustees’ meeting, we took the sad decision to officially cancel the remainder of our 2020 season so we will not be presenting any shows at Beckenham Theatre for the rest of this year. We had hoped that our Children’s Theatre production of Willy Russell’s Our Day Out, which had already begun rehearsals prior to lockdown, might take place in the October half-term and we had planned to hold delayed auditions for our Christmas show, Panto Pandemonium, in September once the schools had gone back, but the twin difficulties of rehearsing and performing two large scale shows in such a small theatre, together with the prospect of extremely reduced audiences to comply with social distancing rules, has made reopening both a practical and financial non-starter for us. Consequently, we had no choice but to fall in line with other amateur and professional theatres across the country and remain closed for the rest of the year.
A final decision has yet to be made whether or not we can restart our children’s and youth theatre workshops this year. Emma Berryman and Louise Garraway, who run the workshops, will be holding further discussions about a possible restart later in the year but this will not be until November, after the half-term break, at the very earliest.
Our current plan is to try and reopen our doors in 2021 and, to that end, the BTC production committee will meet shortly to discuss our season of plays for next year. We hope to include most, if not all, of this year’s cancelled productions and will be contacting the respective directors in the near future to discuss new dates with them. Hopefully, we will be able to announce the new season in the autumn and begin the audition process – even if these have to be on Zoom – before the end of this year. There will be at least one production slot available next year so, if you are interested in putting on a play with us, please contact us at beckenhamtheatre@outlook.com with your proposals and availability.
In the meantime, we would like to thank all our members and friends for your continued support during these strange and difficult times. It is greatly appreciated by all of us. If you would like to keep in touch, please remember you can still join Phil Cohen’s Friday night Zoom Socials, which are regularly attended by both past and present members of BTC. Details are posted weekly on our Facebook page or contact us at beckenhamtheatre@outlook.com and we will send you the link to join these sessions. Our thanks go to Phil for his continued enthusiasm in organising these get-togethers so please do give them your support. A small group of BTC members are also in the process of putting together a series of Zoom monologues which we hope to be able to post on our website in the near future, just to let everyone know that we are still here! And keen to get started again fully in 2021!
Finally, if you have any questions, or suggestions regarding possible online projects for the rest of this year, you are welcome to contact us either via the website at http://beckenhamtheatre.com/contact/ or via our Facebook members page.
We look forward to welcoming you back to Beckenham Theatre as soon as it is safe to do so.
Kind Regards,
Beckenham Theatre Trustees and the Team Leaders of the Beckenham Children’s and Youth Theatres
